The strong growth in demand for portable consumer electronics is driving the need for high-capacity storage devices. Non-volatile semiconductor memory devices, such as flash memory storage cards, are becoming widely used to meet the ever-growing demands on digital information storage and exchange. Their portability, versatility and rugged design, along with their high reliability and large capacity, have made such memory devices ideal for use in a wide variety of electronic devices, including for example digital cameras, digital music players, video game consoles, PDAs and cellular telephones.
While a wide variety of packaging configurations are known, flash memory storage cards may in general be fabricated as system-in-a-package (SiP) or multichip modules (MCM), where a plurality of die are mounted on a substrate in a stacked configuration. An edge view of a conventional semiconductor package 20 (without molding compound) is shown in prior art FIGS. 1 and 2. Typical packages include a plurality of semiconductor die 22, 24 mounted to a substrate 26. It is known to layer semiconductor die on top of each other either with an offset (prior art FIG. 1) or in a stacked configuration. In a stacked configuration, the die 22, 24 may be separated by a spacer layer 34 (prior art FIG. 2), or by a film layer in which the wire bonds from the lower die may embed. Although not shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the semiconductor die are formed with die bond pads on an upper surface of the die. Substrate 26 may be formed of an electrically insulating core sandwiched between upper and lower conductive layers.
The upper and/or lower conductive layers may be etched to form conductance patterns including electrical leads and bond fingers. Wire bonds may be bonded between the die bond pads of the semiconductor die 22, 24 and the bond fingers of the substrate 26 to electrically couple the semiconductor die to the substrate. The electrical leads on the substrate in turn provide an electrical path between the die and a host device. Once electrical connections between the die and substrate are made, the assembly is then typically encased in a molding compound (not shown) to provide a protective package.
The length of the substrate 26, and consequently the overall length of the encapsulated package 20, is bigger than the die 22, 24. One reason for this is that space is needed between the die and wire bond position on the substrate for a wire bond capillary 32 (FIG. 2) to form the wire bonds between the substrate 26 and the die 22, 24. If the wire bond to the substrate 26 is formed too close to the die, the capillary 32 will contact one of the die in the die stack before forming the bond on the substrate. The higher the die stack, the more space is required between the die and wire bond position on the substrate.